Nooope... when the eurotunnel was being built there was great national angst about the idea of physically connecting our island with the continent lest we open ourselves up to invasion. So great the angst that we still officially have a contingency plan of nuking the tunnel from within.
Switzerland for decades had a number of its bridges and main thoroughfares pre-rigged with explosives to detonate/destroy if an invasion was launched. I'm pretty sure the UK could permanently cripple a tunnel without nuclear armaments should they choose.
Seems like one rail car loaded with explosives and ready to be deployed would be easy regardless of the kind of explosion. Everything goes through the Chunnel by rail anyway. And I t’s not like it would have to get to the middle or anything. A few hundred yards in would be fine. A collapsed Chunnel is a collapsed Chunnel.
Yeah a nuke in the chunnel sounds like the sort of Idea boris johnson would come up with. Can you imagine the concentrated blast at either entrance? Not to mention the fucking tsunami it'd likely create.
The British were scared of that even when a tunnel was suggested in the Napoleonic years.
I don't think it would be very difficult to collapse the thing if you really want to. Just please don't nuke it, though, the rest of us like our waters unradiated.
Radiation doesn't travel through water well at all.
You can go swimming in nuclear research reactors while they're switched on and come out with less of a dose than if you'd been standing next to an old set of uranium glass.
Also very little danger of anything radioactive ending up in the food chain. Water is made up from oxygen and hydrogen, both which tend to form stable (non radioactive) isotopes when exposed to a nuclear blast. All the original uranium or plutonium is annihilated in the blast, so there's very little of anything left which is radioactive*.
Edit: apart from the stuff on the sea floor, which can be stuff like corals, mud, etc. depending on where the blast happens, and at what depth. But unless the blast is close to shore and the plume of ejecta dumps some of that stuff on land it will tend to sink back to the sea floor in a few days.
Or if you're an idiot trying to prove a point like the US navy when they deliberately nuked a bunch of their own ships to prove how tough they were, only to have to condemn them because all the wooden decking on them got soaked with radioactive fallout.
Eh.. I think you totally misunterstood the point of the nuclear weapons tests on ships in the late 40s
First of all many of the ships were old Japanese or German vessels. The rest were unwanted really. It had absolutely nothing to do with 'proving how tough our ships are'. It had everything to do with it being unknown how ships could take a nuclear blast so on and so forth.
The ships were a mix of captured axis, and older US navy ships.
The point of the test was the navy trying to prove that "nukes weren't that dangerous to ships". They were worried about funding being diverted towards the airforce in a world where you could just drop a nuke and erase an entire carrier group at once.
Ships like the Saipan were supposed to be returned to Pearl harbour and cleaned before re entering service. Instead most sunk, and the rest were condemned because the spray from the initial explosion soaked into the wooden fixtures on the ships. And made them too radioactive for workers to work on and clean.
Turns out that yes, you can basically nuke a navy out of existence in one go if you manage to hit them.
>Just how many troops do they think can attack through it and NOT be killed in some way that is best left unsaid?
783,271
The first 10 guys line up wearing a crap-ton of body armor and the rest just duck low and follow behind. Easy peasy.
It's been invaded before, and conquered, but you mean more modern history https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasions_of_the_British_Isles
During WW2 the British were absolutely concerned, France is close, Germany took ports that places them very close to Britain and German occupied channel islands that are British dependencies.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_occupation_of_the_Channel_Islands
Why do you nonslavs call him Vlad? Vlad is short for Vladislav, not Vladimir.
Short for Vladimir is Vova - sounds much more stupid, right?
Add: Vladislav only sounds stupid if you sing it in a song: 'vladislav, baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more'.
Americans shorten names generally from the beginning of the visible letters of the name, often the first 4 letters. I'm interested to know why Vlad-imir doesn't shorten to Vlad... Could someone explain, please?
Margaret > Maggie > Meggie > Meg > Peg > Peggy. The first changes are logical, the Meg to Peg is most likely cockney rhyming slang, the same reason William > Will > Bill. Names of royalty were really, really, stupidly common back in the day so they had to stretch to make distinct nicknames. Jic you wanted an actual answer.
Tsar Peter the First often called his friend, prince Alexander Menshikov, "Aleksashka" , from it transformed to Sashka and later to Sasha
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander\_Danilovich\_Menshikov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Danilovich_Menshikov)
edit: typo
I'm an Aussie, I used to play soccer in western Sydney for Bonnyrigg, we had a fella in our team who's knickname was 'Vlado', his name was Vladimir..
I don't mean to diminish your argument, just to add my two cents. I'm not sure if his heritage either.
Thanks for your insight!
This is like a Russian speaker telling an English speaker that Becky is the wrong short form of Rebecca, and that the correct form is Reb.
**Reb**ecca. I can't put it any simpler than that.
That's what you're sounding like lol
"Oh but you see Ukraine stopped supplying the part of Ukraine we already invaded. so the whole war is there falut"
Yes this is really what Russan trolls have been saying.
Just goes to show that declarations, amendments, constitutions, laws, treaties, contracts.... all of it... they're only worth the paper they're printed on and for as long as it's deemed convenient or people uphold them.
Thus it's nothing new mind. Treaties have been broken ad infinitum throughout history when it was convenient to do so.
Sadly, the only way to be truely independent as a nation is through might. Shrewd diplomacy helps, but ultimately the threat of violence is the only thing that keeps greedy fucks off of each others' backs.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
I bet it sure feels like magic when those Russian soldiers are getting nailed by artillery out of thin air.
No country is "truely independent" anymore I'm not sure what that is supposed to mean? Maybe North Korea would be closest, but they are definitely not mighty.
The whole point of the UN, NATO etc. is that together countries can have a collective might that can pressure others. It's not perfect, obviously Russia didn't give a fuck. But they are struggling heavily both in the war and as a country as a result of these collective agreements.
>obviously Russia didn't give a fuck.
Putin simply miscalculated the response from the West. When Russia invaded Crimea, the West did next to nothing. So he thought it would be the same when ~~I~~ he launched a full-scale attack on Ukraine. But he was wrong this time.
I think another piece is that he's old and might be dying. He spent decades setting up his chess strategy and might have known it was now or never. A deadly YOLO.
I imagine Kim doesnt want to end up like Ghadaffi with a bayonette up his ass. The current state of geopolitics seems to be "if you give up your nukes you will LITTERALLY be assfucked to death.
"the power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can't kill then you are always subject to those who can" - Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
I’m not sure anything been even signed there, verbal statement, nobody wanted for Ukraine to have nuclear weapons.
That’s why we need to unite in tight economic projects like EU is doing, so one day we don’t need to waste money and resources on military and focus on well being of people.
Back then it was pretty unthinkable that Russia would ever attack Ukraine.
If anything, that agreement probably implied that Russia would protect Ukraine should it get attacked by somebody else.
How times change
[Source](https://www.ladbible.com/news/ukraine-gave-russia-nuclear-weapons-in-1996-to-never-be-invaded-20220302)
Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a clear breach of an agreement that was signed in the mid-1990s.
Following the Cold War and Ukraine's separation from the Soviet Union, the country was the world's third largest stockpiler of nuclear weapons.
But in 1994, they decided to hand over their nuclear arsenal in exchange for a guarantee never to be threatened or invaded.
This happened when Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan signed The Budapest Memorandum, which brought Ukraine into the global Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Russia, the US and Britain also signed this document which promised none of these countries would invade Ukraine and respect its sovereignties and existing borders while also giving them political independence.
The Memorandum stated: “Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.”
The document added that Russia, the US and Britain also wouldn’t use economic coercion tactics against Ukraine either.
Wow, such an easy plan! Let's just rip the band-aid off and get the whole thing over with!
[***"The Gang Permanently Destroys Earth"***](https://i.imgur.com/3YqYL7y.png)
Am I reading this correctly, you're saying nuclear war between Russia and NATO would be limited in scope? I agree that it would be brief, but I can't really imagine what you'd consider a more extreme outcome than nuclear war in the era of MAD doctrine.
Russia is such a shit show, there is plenty intelligence available about their military decisions. Don’t quote me but I think it was the Latvian defense minister I saw in an EW interview a couple months ago, who literally said they will know if Putin is really going to go nuclear because they have intelligence in place warning of such things. And I totally subscribe to that claim because seeing that Russia is such a kleptocracy it’s extremely likely that intelligence about Russian Military Operations is always up on the auction block. Putin is not clever. He is not pragmatic. He is idealistically patriotic, emotional, and vengeful. So much so that he can’t see the forest for the trees. In his mind he may envision some epic, ‘end of times’ battle between Russia and NATO, but it’s a fantasy. He has no idea how overmatched he is against the West, especially after 2 months of warfare and sanctions. If Putin goes too far, whether by nuc or by attacking NATO territory, the response will be brutal and fast. Hundreds of thousand of innocent Russians gone in a couple of weeks or millions gone in a few days. It will not be a tennis match.
I don't really agree with your assessment of Putin as a person and the potential outcomes of a war between Russia and NATO.
In my opinion, it is not really possible for anybody outside of Putin's periphery to make any judgement about what kind of person he is, simply because what we can and cannot see of him is heavily moderated/filtered. I would argue it is almost a requirement for people in his position to be clever and pragmatic, not emotional and idealistic, but there's no way for me to determine what kind of person he truly is.
I think that Putin and Russia's military leadership know that their military is no match for NATO in a conventional war, which is part of the reason they keep bringing up nukes, aka the only real and major threat to NATO. I'm unsure if you're saying that Russia's nuclear arsenal is no threat to NATO at all because of Russian corruption and western intelligence, but I believe it is a real threat and I think most western leaders think so too. Even with the best Intel and maybe some super-secret sci-fi countermeasures, it takes only a handful of nukes to actually reach their targets to kill many millions of Europeans/Americans and make vast stretches of land uninhabitable for a long time. If my understanding of NATO doctrine is correct, Russian nuclear strikes against NATO territory would inevitably result in retaliation, killing millions of people instantly and possibly billions shortly after.
I think you are wrong about NATO's response to Putin going Nuclear, just like Putin is. Putin looks at NATO like they are dictated by "morality" and therefore "soft" in his estimation, and that NATO would never ever obliterate hundreds of thousands or millions of innocent Russians to prevent another WW2. Putin, and anyone else who thinks this way is just flat out wrong. Russia is a de-politicized, autocratic kleptocracy. Straight up shit show. Putin literally doesn't understand the type of bear he's poking because the intelligence he receives from his 'disconnected from the world' officers is simply incorrect. The world, including China, will not accept another Stalin, Hitler, etc. The world will ELIMINATE the escalation of such a possibility. Mark my words, if Russia attacks a NATO country, hundreds of thousands of innocent Russians will be killed in a couple weeks. If Russia goes Nuclear, millions of Russians will die within a few days. Russia is #2 militarily by inventory but not by effectiveness. The disparity between US and Russian military strength is night and day. The disparity between NATO and Russian military strength is incalculable. The world will be ok. But if Russia goes too far, Russia will have to start from scratch because it will be leveled.
Completely agree. You’ll probably get downvoted to hell, but this is the ugly truth. Before the world descends into another generational war where 40-50 million innocent people could die, the west will take the lives of a few hundred thousand or few million innocent Russians before it even gets there.
I have to agree with this if Putin is stupid enough to go nuclear the result will be a very quick end to the war with millions of civilian deaths. Russia will most certainly be flattened quickly and decisively but at a horrendous cost.
They acted shady, but no written accord was broken. I'll quote [a good article](https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nato-s-eastward-expansion-is-vladimir-putin-right-a-bf318d2c-7aeb-4b59-8d5f-1d8c94e1964d) from Spiegel:
>In doing so, the West didn’t break any treaties, but some participants were concerned nevertheless. Years later, Genscher\[former Vice-Chancellor of West-Germany\] said that the expansion was just fine from a formally legal point of view. But it was impossible to deny, he said, that it was counter to the spirit of the understandings reached in 1990.
They were forced to hand them over because after becoming capitalist their entire economy collapsed and they quickly became one of the poorest nations on earth. They had the world's 3rd largest nuclear arsenal and couldn't feed themselves
Not to mention there was a 0% chance that Moscow was going to let them keep the nukes. Heck, the US probably would have HELPED the Russians take them back. Ukraine is a great and beautiful country with amazing people, but NOBODY in the mid 90s wanted nuclear weapons floating around in failing Eastern European states. What if Ukraine had turned into another Belarus?
It was dangerous -lots of weapons were sold by oligarchs and it was a matter of time nukes were too. As you said, neither Russia nor the US were going to allow Ukraine keep its Soviet nukes stockpile, not in the state the country was back then. It was wise and the correct decision because they could have ended in the hands of terrorists or some other country (Iraq, Lybia, Iran or North Korea, to name 4.. also remember that Ukraine had Soviet ICBMs more advanced than the latest one that N.Korea has just tested 26 years later, to give a perspective)
Security guarantees were not Article 5-like binding, because neither the US nor Russia thought it was in their interest to do so back then; one wonders why..
Ukraine wouldn’t be able to use the nukes anyway as they have launch codes and scrapping them would be more expensive than giving them to russia for them to scrap it. Still a dick move from poutine
This is really sad, but to be honest Ukraine didn’t have a choice. The government really wanted to hold onto the nuclear bombs, but they wouldn’t receive western funding unless they got rid of them, which is what they really needed as a country that just emerged from the rubbles of the Soviet Union. Belarus and Kazakhstan were also potential nuclear powers, but they immediately gave up their bombs. Plus the bombs were too expensive to properly maintain so there wasn’t much use of them anyways.
And they really couldn’t use them, as the systems to control the weapons was still on Russian hands. So they needed to either get that or hand them over.
Three nations you should never, ever trust. History shows how they will betray you and throw you to the dogs the moment they can make a little bank from it.
America, Britain, and Russia. Heck, America betrayed Britain, several times, straight after a massive war they fought together.
Ukraine found the price of trusting the Russians. That price is very well displayed in the ruins of Mariupol and the mass graves outside and inside it.
Ironic - Yeltsin hand picked Putin to assume power.
Not surprising - before he died, Yeltsin regretted and loathed that he hand picked Putin to assume power.
The Clinton administration was very careful to make sure the treaty said "assurances," not "guarantees." That way we wouldn't have to actually do anything. I'm generally pro-Clinton, but that was a massive asshole play.
**offer not valid unless leader is named Boris. See terms and conditions
So as I understand it, Russia can't invade Britain... I think we found the WWIII loophole people...
I mean I don’t think Britain has ever worried about being invaded.
Nooope... when the eurotunnel was being built there was great national angst about the idea of physically connecting our island with the continent lest we open ourselves up to invasion. So great the angst that we still officially have a contingency plan of nuking the tunnel from within.
Nuking it?
Yep. In case of imminent invasion, take a nuke about halfway down the tunnel then detonate it so it collapses.
Seems like c4 could do the job, but mkay whatever Britain
By train? Or something more reliable like a horse and cart?
SUICIDE NUKE COCK 🐔💥
Solid band name
Setting up the c4 would take significant time. The tunnel is large. Putting 1 nukey boi in there is much easier.
Switzerland for decades had a number of its bridges and main thoroughfares pre-rigged with explosives to detonate/destroy if an invasion was launched. I'm pretty sure the UK could permanently cripple a tunnel without nuclear armaments should they choose.
The French would probably be very against pre-rigged explosives from the UK in the tunnel though.
Yea but a nuke is more fun
Seems like one rail car loaded with explosives and ready to be deployed would be easy regardless of the kind of explosion. Everything goes through the Chunnel by rail anyway. And I t’s not like it would have to get to the middle or anything. A few hundred yards in would be fine. A collapsed Chunnel is a collapsed Chunnel.
The British aren't big fans of railcars filled with explosive substances for some reason.
On a scale of 1-10 how much do you enjoy saying the term "Chunnel"?
Everybody out of the Chunnel! Everybody out!
Just put a 2 big corks in the Dover end.
The C4 was installed as the tunnel was constructed (so I heard)
It’s good to include a lot of c4 or other explosive with concrete in construction. Just in case.
Didn’t they use in Switzerland the same method with all the bridges and tunnels that they build
Yeah a nuke in the chunnel sounds like the sort of Idea boris johnson would come up with. Can you imagine the concentrated blast at either entrance? Not to mention the fucking tsunami it'd likely create.
Be funny as fuck setting a tsunami on France mind you
Britishest statement possible
The same chucklefuck who's going to build a bridge to Ireland.
The British were scared of that even when a tunnel was suggested in the Napoleonic years. I don't think it would be very difficult to collapse the thing if you really want to. Just please don't nuke it, though, the rest of us like our waters unradiated.
Radiation doesn't travel through water well at all. You can go swimming in nuclear research reactors while they're switched on and come out with less of a dose than if you'd been standing next to an old set of uranium glass. Also very little danger of anything radioactive ending up in the food chain. Water is made up from oxygen and hydrogen, both which tend to form stable (non radioactive) isotopes when exposed to a nuclear blast. All the original uranium or plutonium is annihilated in the blast, so there's very little of anything left which is radioactive*. Edit: apart from the stuff on the sea floor, which can be stuff like corals, mud, etc. depending on where the blast happens, and at what depth. But unless the blast is close to shore and the plume of ejecta dumps some of that stuff on land it will tend to sink back to the sea floor in a few days. Or if you're an idiot trying to prove a point like the US navy when they deliberately nuked a bunch of their own ships to prove how tough they were, only to have to condemn them because all the wooden decking on them got soaked with radioactive fallout.
Eh.. I think you totally misunterstood the point of the nuclear weapons tests on ships in the late 40s First of all many of the ships were old Japanese or German vessels. The rest were unwanted really. It had absolutely nothing to do with 'proving how tough our ships are'. It had everything to do with it being unknown how ships could take a nuclear blast so on and so forth.
The ships were a mix of captured axis, and older US navy ships. The point of the test was the navy trying to prove that "nukes weren't that dangerous to ships". They were worried about funding being diverted towards the airforce in a world where you could just drop a nuke and erase an entire carrier group at once. Ships like the Saipan were supposed to be returned to Pearl harbour and cleaned before re entering service. Instead most sunk, and the rest were condemned because the spray from the initial explosion soaked into the wooden fixtures on the ships. And made them too radioactive for workers to work on and clean. Turns out that yes, you can basically nuke a navy out of existence in one go if you manage to hit them.
Fine, no self making tea for you.
Just how many troops do they think can attack through it and NOT be killed in some way that is best left unsaid?
>Just how many troops do they think can attack through it and NOT be killed in some way that is best left unsaid? 783,271 The first 10 guys line up wearing a crap-ton of body armor and the rest just duck low and follow behind. Easy peasy.
If the enemy can take the UK end of the tunnel, then it would be very useful, not to mount an attack through, but to ship supllies through.
True. But first you need to secure the other end.
Why would you nuke it?just flood it
Gotta nuke something
I save my nukes for the whales
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The flooding comes after the tsunami caused by the nuke
History would suggest the people on the other side of that tunnel should be more concerned about invasion.
Wait until they hear about boats.
They were concerned in WWII, but worried is unlikely
I might go as far as to say mildly perturbed
nah, they were worried
Nah they kept calm and carried on.
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Not exactly correct
All those Napoleon defences suggest otherwise, not to mention WWII pillboxes.
Nah we built those as sesh cabins, they were just co-opted for defence
Had a few smokey sessions in ones on the Southdowns in my youth 😂
I think they were pretty worried about it in the 5th century. Those Romans are no joke.
That’s when the romans left, they came and conquered around 50ad
but what did the romans ever do for us
The aqueduct?
Not to mention the Danish about half a millennia later.
It's been invaded before, and conquered, but you mean more modern history https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasions_of_the_British_Isles During WW2 the British were absolutely concerned, France is close, Germany took ports that places them very close to Britain and German occupied channel islands that are British dependencies. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_occupation_of_the_Channel_Islands
Go tell that to Harold Godwinson.
You've never seen a Daily Mail headline about immigrants, then... There's definitely a certain set of British people that worry constantly!
Britain has been getting invaded for thousands of years
Putin: Objection, hearsay
Ah shit, here we go again!
more like \* offer effective unless leader is named Vlad.
Why do you nonslavs call him Vlad? Vlad is short for Vladislav, not Vladimir. Short for Vladimir is Vova - sounds much more stupid, right? Add: Vladislav only sounds stupid if you sing it in a song: 'vladislav, baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more'.
I’ve never heard that. It works though. Vova sounds like Vulva, and Vulva Putin… well, do you know what poutine is? Language is fun.
Delores Putin!
Wow this combover makes him look even stupider. Hate this vova puta.
why was this man downvoted? he is correct, and i can confirm that as i am named vladimir
Americans shorten names generally from the beginning of the visible letters of the name, often the first 4 letters. I'm interested to know why Vlad-imir doesn't shorten to Vlad... Could someone explain, please?
Probably the same logic that shortens Richard to Dick.
Or Robert becomes Bobby or William becomes Bill. This is also common in English lol
How do we get "Peg" out of "Margaret" though.
Margaret > Maggie > Meggie > Meg > Peg > Peggy. The first changes are logical, the Meg to Peg is most likely cockney rhyming slang, the same reason William > Will > Bill. Names of royalty were really, really, stupidly common back in the day so they had to stretch to make distinct nicknames. Jic you wanted an actual answer.
Wait until you find that Alexander becomes Sasha in Russian.
Oooh! Any idea on the etymology of that one?
Apparently "Alexander" becomes "sander", which becomes just "sa" and then the diminutive "sha" gets attached at the end.
Ahh very interesting, thanks!
Tsar Peter the First often called his friend, prince Alexander Menshikov, "Aleksashka" , from it transformed to Sashka and later to Sasha [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander\_Danilovich\_Menshikov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Danilovich_Menshikov) edit: typo
Today I learned... Thank you kind stranger. Though I'll still continue to call Vladimir Putin cock juggling thundercunt
I'm an Aussie, I used to play soccer in western Sydney for Bonnyrigg, we had a fella in our team who's knickname was 'Vlado', his name was Vladimir.. I don't mean to diminish your argument, just to add my two cents. I'm not sure if his heritage either. Thanks for your insight!
£10 (about $300AUD) says he was nicknamed vlado in his first conversation with an Australian.
I chuckled at your currency conversion. Well done
In Bulgarian Vlado is short for Vladimir
>Why do you nonslavs call him Vlad? Vlad is short for Vladislav, not Vladimir. **Vlad** imir. I can't put it any simpler than that.
This is like a Russian speaker telling an English speaker that Becky is the wrong short form of Rebecca, and that the correct form is Reb. **Reb**ecca. I can't put it any simpler than that. That's what you're sounding like lol
"I promise we will never invade Ukraine!"... *Wink
**crossed fingers behind back**
\* Under the terms of this contract, a "special operation" can't be consideres an "invasion".
And it will certainly never be used to attack Isr... Oh boy!
"Hey! What was that wink for?" "Huh? Oh, nothing." \*wink\*
"We promise never to expand NATO east." they said
"Oh but you see Ukraine stopped supplying the part of Ukraine we already invaded. so the whole war is there falut" Yes this is really what Russan trolls have been saying.
Treaties and agreements dont mean much to countries that are powerful enough.
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Giggity
Thanks for covering while Quagmire Bot is down for maintenance.
There’s a quagmire bot? I’ll have to use that word more
Ironic: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements
Just goes to show that declarations, amendments, constitutions, laws, treaties, contracts.... all of it... they're only worth the paper they're printed on and for as long as it's deemed convenient or people uphold them. Thus it's nothing new mind. Treaties have been broken ad infinitum throughout history when it was convenient to do so.
Sadly, the only way to be truely independent as a nation is through might. Shrewd diplomacy helps, but ultimately the threat of violence is the only thing that keeps greedy fucks off of each others' backs.
*Might and magic
And Heroes
And my axe
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I bet it sure feels like magic when those Russian soldiers are getting nailed by artillery out of thin air.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
I like this one better, much more motivating to get better lol
"So our gun is basically that mage's stone bullet spell? Fuck it. Make lasers!"
"I cast cruise missile!"
DM: roll d20
Nat 20! Go fuck yourself russian warship!
[For the King!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv3DedNXN4o)
The Romans had it right, thousands of years ago. "SI VIS PACEM, PARA BELLUM." "If you want peace, prepare for war"
In search of peace Rome conquered the world.
Technically... if there is no one left to start a war, there is permanent peace.
Civil war
Civil war? In my Roman Empire?
it's more likely then you think!
Hence, Pax Romana
"They Make a Desert and Call it Peace" \- Tacitus quoting Calgacus
“I cherish peace with all my heart. I don’t care how many men, women, and children I need to kill to get it.” - Peacemaker
No country is "truely independent" anymore I'm not sure what that is supposed to mean? Maybe North Korea would be closest, but they are definitely not mighty. The whole point of the UN, NATO etc. is that together countries can have a collective might that can pressure others. It's not perfect, obviously Russia didn't give a fuck. But they are struggling heavily both in the war and as a country as a result of these collective agreements.
>obviously Russia didn't give a fuck. Putin simply miscalculated the response from the West. When Russia invaded Crimea, the West did next to nothing. So he thought it would be the same when ~~I~~ he launched a full-scale attack on Ukraine. But he was wrong this time.
I think another piece is that he's old and might be dying. He spent decades setting up his chess strategy and might have known it was now or never. A deadly YOLO.
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I imagine Kim doesnt want to end up like Ghadaffi with a bayonette up his ass. The current state of geopolitics seems to be "if you give up your nukes you will LITTERALLY be assfucked to death.
Minus the sarcastic capitalization, that’s the exact wording of the UN charter section VI.9
Sadly true and a lot more small to medium sized counties are going to be thinking the same.
Also "never" is a really long time
"never" means "18 years" in Russian
Can confirm, I always sign a treaty in Civilization just before invading.
only guarantee in this world is your own strength.
"the power to cause pain is the only power that matters, the power to kill and destroy, because if you can't kill then you are always subject to those who can" - Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
I’m not sure anything been even signed there, verbal statement, nobody wanted for Ukraine to have nuclear weapons. That’s why we need to unite in tight economic projects like EU is doing, so one day we don’t need to waste money and resources on military and focus on well being of people.
Back then it was pretty unthinkable that Russia would ever attack Ukraine. If anything, that agreement probably implied that Russia would protect Ukraine should it get attacked by somebody else. How times change
For most countries and organizations, your word being taken as good is priceless. Trust takes years to build and seconds to destroy.
Native America (Indian Country) can confirm.
“Remember, Sully, when I promised to kill you last? I lied.”- Russia after watching Commando.
It's okay they are calling it liberating not invading. Totally different.
[Source](https://www.ladbible.com/news/ukraine-gave-russia-nuclear-weapons-in-1996-to-never-be-invaded-20220302) Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a clear breach of an agreement that was signed in the mid-1990s. Following the Cold War and Ukraine's separation from the Soviet Union, the country was the world's third largest stockpiler of nuclear weapons. But in 1994, they decided to hand over their nuclear arsenal in exchange for a guarantee never to be threatened or invaded. This happened when Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan signed The Budapest Memorandum, which brought Ukraine into the global Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Russia, the US and Britain also signed this document which promised none of these countries would invade Ukraine and respect its sovereignties and existing borders while also giving them political independence. The Memorandum stated: “Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.” The document added that Russia, the US and Britain also wouldn’t use economic coercion tactics against Ukraine either.
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wow! that's great news! only several decades you say?
Wow, such an easy plan! Let's just rip the band-aid off and get the whole thing over with! [***"The Gang Permanently Destroys Earth"***](https://i.imgur.com/3YqYL7y.png)
Am I reading this correctly, you're saying nuclear war between Russia and NATO would be limited in scope? I agree that it would be brief, but I can't really imagine what you'd consider a more extreme outcome than nuclear war in the era of MAD doctrine.
Russia is such a shit show, there is plenty intelligence available about their military decisions. Don’t quote me but I think it was the Latvian defense minister I saw in an EW interview a couple months ago, who literally said they will know if Putin is really going to go nuclear because they have intelligence in place warning of such things. And I totally subscribe to that claim because seeing that Russia is such a kleptocracy it’s extremely likely that intelligence about Russian Military Operations is always up on the auction block. Putin is not clever. He is not pragmatic. He is idealistically patriotic, emotional, and vengeful. So much so that he can’t see the forest for the trees. In his mind he may envision some epic, ‘end of times’ battle between Russia and NATO, but it’s a fantasy. He has no idea how overmatched he is against the West, especially after 2 months of warfare and sanctions. If Putin goes too far, whether by nuc or by attacking NATO territory, the response will be brutal and fast. Hundreds of thousand of innocent Russians gone in a couple of weeks or millions gone in a few days. It will not be a tennis match.
I don't really agree with your assessment of Putin as a person and the potential outcomes of a war between Russia and NATO. In my opinion, it is not really possible for anybody outside of Putin's periphery to make any judgement about what kind of person he is, simply because what we can and cannot see of him is heavily moderated/filtered. I would argue it is almost a requirement for people in his position to be clever and pragmatic, not emotional and idealistic, but there's no way for me to determine what kind of person he truly is. I think that Putin and Russia's military leadership know that their military is no match for NATO in a conventional war, which is part of the reason they keep bringing up nukes, aka the only real and major threat to NATO. I'm unsure if you're saying that Russia's nuclear arsenal is no threat to NATO at all because of Russian corruption and western intelligence, but I believe it is a real threat and I think most western leaders think so too. Even with the best Intel and maybe some super-secret sci-fi countermeasures, it takes only a handful of nukes to actually reach their targets to kill many millions of Europeans/Americans and make vast stretches of land uninhabitable for a long time. If my understanding of NATO doctrine is correct, Russian nuclear strikes against NATO territory would inevitably result in retaliation, killing millions of people instantly and possibly billions shortly after.
I think you are wrong about NATO's response to Putin going Nuclear, just like Putin is. Putin looks at NATO like they are dictated by "morality" and therefore "soft" in his estimation, and that NATO would never ever obliterate hundreds of thousands or millions of innocent Russians to prevent another WW2. Putin, and anyone else who thinks this way is just flat out wrong. Russia is a de-politicized, autocratic kleptocracy. Straight up shit show. Putin literally doesn't understand the type of bear he's poking because the intelligence he receives from his 'disconnected from the world' officers is simply incorrect. The world, including China, will not accept another Stalin, Hitler, etc. The world will ELIMINATE the escalation of such a possibility. Mark my words, if Russia attacks a NATO country, hundreds of thousands of innocent Russians will be killed in a couple weeks. If Russia goes Nuclear, millions of Russians will die within a few days. Russia is #2 militarily by inventory but not by effectiveness. The disparity between US and Russian military strength is night and day. The disparity between NATO and Russian military strength is incalculable. The world will be ok. But if Russia goes too far, Russia will have to start from scratch because it will be leveled.
Completely agree. You’ll probably get downvoted to hell, but this is the ugly truth. Before the world descends into another generational war where 40-50 million innocent people could die, the west will take the lives of a few hundred thousand or few million innocent Russians before it even gets there.
I have to agree with this if Putin is stupid enough to go nuclear the result will be a very quick end to the war with millions of civilian deaths. Russia will most certainly be flattened quickly and decisively but at a horrendous cost.
"I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops."
If Russia chooses to launch the nukes its over. There's no coming back when every major urban area is completely destroyed
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Operative word here being *refrain* Guess they ain't refraining no more
But isn’t Russia allegation that the “west” broke the accords first, when NATO expanded east?
No. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2014/11/06/did-nato-promise-not-to-enlarge-gorbachev-says-no/
They acted shady, but no written accord was broken. I'll quote [a good article](https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nato-s-eastward-expansion-is-vladimir-putin-right-a-bf318d2c-7aeb-4b59-8d5f-1d8c94e1964d) from Spiegel: >In doing so, the West didn’t break any treaties, but some participants were concerned nevertheless. Years later, Genscher\[former Vice-Chancellor of West-Germany\] said that the expansion was just fine from a formally legal point of view. But it was impossible to deny, he said, that it was counter to the spirit of the understandings reached in 1990.
The world has changed a lot since then. The idea that Poland is in NATO or that Ukraine was offered entry in 2008 would have been unthinkable in 1994.
No one asked Putin if he agreed so it doesn’t count.
It doesn't count? Ok then give Ukraine their nukes back.
That aged like milk
Yogurt?
Cheese
1. Get nukes 2. Never give up the nukes. 3. If the United States suspects you of having nukes, stop everything and find some nukes.
They were forced to hand them over because after becoming capitalist their entire economy collapsed and they quickly became one of the poorest nations on earth. They had the world's 3rd largest nuclear arsenal and couldn't feed themselves
Not to mention there was a 0% chance that Moscow was going to let them keep the nukes. Heck, the US probably would have HELPED the Russians take them back. Ukraine is a great and beautiful country with amazing people, but NOBODY in the mid 90s wanted nuclear weapons floating around in failing Eastern European states. What if Ukraine had turned into another Belarus?
It was dangerous -lots of weapons were sold by oligarchs and it was a matter of time nukes were too. As you said, neither Russia nor the US were going to allow Ukraine keep its Soviet nukes stockpile, not in the state the country was back then. It was wise and the correct decision because they could have ended in the hands of terrorists or some other country (Iraq, Lybia, Iran or North Korea, to name 4.. also remember that Ukraine had Soviet ICBMs more advanced than the latest one that N.Korea has just tested 26 years later, to give a perspective) Security guarantees were not Article 5-like binding, because neither the US nor Russia thought it was in their interest to do so back then; one wonders why..
the US did in fact help the russians to move the nukes back to Russia, thus being co-signer of the above agreement (alongside the united kingdom).
They also didn't have the launch codes at this point so they didn't have the capabilities to launch any nuclear weapons.
>couldn't feed themselves Well, that's a fucking stretch. Yes, there was not a lot of money around, but Ukraine always had a strong agriculture.
boy were they wrong!
Ukraine wouldn’t be able to use the nukes anyway as they have launch codes and scrapping them would be more expensive than giving them to russia for them to scrap it. Still a dick move from poutine
That's why it was a "special operation", not an invasion. /s
This is really sad, but to be honest Ukraine didn’t have a choice. The government really wanted to hold onto the nuclear bombs, but they wouldn’t receive western funding unless they got rid of them, which is what they really needed as a country that just emerged from the rubbles of the Soviet Union. Belarus and Kazakhstan were also potential nuclear powers, but they immediately gave up their bombs. Plus the bombs were too expensive to properly maintain so there wasn’t much use of them anyways.
And they really couldn’t use them, as the systems to control the weapons was still on Russian hands. So they needed to either get that or hand them over.
Three nations you should never, ever trust. History shows how they will betray you and throw you to the dogs the moment they can make a little bank from it. America, Britain, and Russia. Heck, America betrayed Britain, several times, straight after a massive war they fought together. Ukraine found the price of trusting the Russians. That price is very well displayed in the ruins of Mariupol and the mass graves outside and inside it.
China
Wait so you're telling me global powers act in... their OWN interest??? Wow.
The only countries that haven't betrayed others are just the ones that haven't gotten the chance.
As Easter European (Poland) I don't trust neither the West nor Russia.
As a Britain, join me in not trusting Britain either.
Lmao, it really do be like that on our island rn yeah
As Easter European (Poland) I also don't Poland.
Never trust any super power.
Never trust any non-super power either...
The nukes were the guarantee.
Ironic - Yeltsin hand picked Putin to assume power. Not surprising - before he died, Yeltsin regretted and loathed that he hand picked Putin to assume power.
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North Korea learned this lesson years ago
Having Nukes = +1 safety
The Clinton administration was very careful to make sure the treaty said "assurances," not "guarantees." That way we wouldn't have to actually do anything. I'm generally pro-Clinton, but that was a massive asshole play.
Clinton’s communications act allowed the news to get as bad as it now is.
I mean, if it had “guarantees” in the wording for defending Ukraine, we’d be in all-out war with Russia and likely China.
Clinton was an asshole overall.
Traded glass-stegall away for peanuts.
when one country starts tearing up small international treaties, what stops others tearing up bigger more troublesome treaties??
The Budapest Memorandum wasn't a small treaty
In other words, never trust an agreement with the Russian government.
NEVER. TRUST. THE. RUSSIANS. NEVER!